"I first encountered these works when I came across a frame-mounted Keith Haring flag. The piece challenged me and prompted me to discover the rest of the flag collection”, explains an enthusiastic Laura Restelli Brizard, the exhibition’s curator.
The collection has been put together and curated since 1986 by art historian Jean-Christophe Claude and is based on works owned by Daniel Vial. In the beginning, a few pieces were displayed in front of the Forbidden City in 1987. Now the collection includes no fewer than thirty-six flags – identical reproductions of the original works with the agreement of the artists and estates – that are out in the open and fluttering in the breeze to mark the fifth edition of the Monaco Art Week that runs until the end of July. The flags have been designed by big names on the international scene such as Vito Acconci, Valerio Adami, Bernard Bazile, Ben, Günther Förg, Eva Jospin, Joseph Kosuth, Robert Longo, Annette Messager, François Morellet and Hervé di Rosa.
"The flag theme has always fascinated artists, because of the proportions and symbolism involved, especially since the twentieth century. Yet when you put one inside a frame, it loses its status as a flag and becomes a work of art. When a flag is displayed along a shoreline, it finally returns to its natural environment, recalling the sails on boats”, says the curator of the exhibition with a smile. The flags are on show in front of the Opera house and along Avenue de Monte-Carlo, and reach up to ten metres in height. They occupy public spaces within the Principality as well as at the Hôtel Hermitage Monte-Carlo and on the terraces of the CMB.
Laura Restelli Brizard explains: “I enjoy bringing art onto the street for people who don’t dare visit a museum. Here, the works of artists who are exhibited in the finest institutions such as the MoMA in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris or the Tate Modern in London can be seen for free and without the limits of opening hours. People can gaze at them for as long as they like and understand the artists’intentions with the help of the bilingual descriptions that are displayed nearby.”
